News

Amazon drivers — all gig workers who don’t work for the company — are hanging cell phones in trees near Amazon delivery stations, fooling the system into thinking that they are closer than they actually are:

The phones in trees seem to serve as master devices that dispatch routes to multiple nearby drivers in on the plot, according to drivers who have observed the process. They believe an unidentified person or entity is acting as an intermediary between Amazon and the drivers and charging drivers to secure more routes, which is against Amazon’s policies…

This sounds like a bad idea.

Posted three years ago, but definitely appropriate for the times.

Matt Blaze discusses an interesting mystery about a Cuban one-time-pad radio station, and a random number generator error that probably helped arrest a pair of Russian spies in the US.

There’s a new unpatched Bluetooth vulnerability:

The issue is with a protocol called Cross-Transport Key Derivation (or CTKD, for short). When, say, an iPhone is getting ready to pair up with Bluetooth-powered device, CTKD’s role is to set up two separate authentication keys for that phone: one for a “Bluetooth Low Energy” device, and one for a device using what’s known as the “Basic Rate/Enhanced Data Rate” standard. Different devices require different amounts of data — and battery power — from a phone. Being able to toggle between the standards needed for Bluetooth devices that take a ton of data (like a Chromecast), and those that require a bit less (like a smartwatch) is more efficient. Incidentally, it might also be less secure…